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What is Karma? Is it just simple “tit for tat,” or is it something deeper?

Many people think of Karma as an extended version of “tit for tat” stretched over lifetimes.

It is often used to justify the unjustifiable:

Crimes against children, poverty, illness or disabilities, gender violence, caste violence, natural disasters.

It is the fastest way to repel any rational person from religion.

Generally, if someone hurts you and you haven't been able to hurt them back, then you leave it for Karma to hurt them.

It actually works, but not because of the reason you may think.

In India, people are vulnerable due to poverty, inequality, and a high crime rate, so there are always chances for things to go wrong. Bad is the rule, and good is the exception in some sense.

If nothing bad happens to you, then something bad will definitely happen to a relative of yours—not by some divine rule, but by the probability of living in weak infrastructure.

That's why a big chunk of the population believes in God, including those who were considered impure by birth. It was never a question of God, but always a question of uncertainty.

That's why the business of Godmen expands, similar to the business of betting—because both sell hope with minimal effort.

So, what is Karma according to the Bhagavad Gita?

If you read the word-by-word definition, it will seem like a “tit for tat” extension.

But if you read the entire scripture and then derive the definition, it becomes clear that Krishna is telling Arjuna: How can you believe that you are doing anything beyond your prakriti ? After all, “tit for tat” is merely a response of prakriti. If you want to perform the right Karma, you first need to transcend your prakriti. It means Arjuna needs to develop the ability to see the right beyond attachments before doing the right.

This makes the Bhagavad Gita very inefficient and a tool for exploitation, useful for authoritarian states.

Almost 100 years ago, Ramana Maharishi devised a better method to address the worldly—mainly political—distortion of scriptures by guiding people toward philosophically deeper texts, such as the Ribhu Gita, which is a simple dialogue between Rishi Ribhu and Nisargadatta.

In Ribhu Geeta, Rishi Ribhu ask question : If you exists in dream world and real world how would you know which one is real you ? How can you prove your existence at absolute level ?

In 1700s, David Hume also asked a similar question, famously known as "David Hume's problem of induction" in the philosophy of science, which we still haven’t been able to solve.

Whatever you know about the world at an absolute level is due to inductive reasoning in some sense

If you can’t prove your existence at an absolute level, how can you prove the existence of Karma or anything else in the world?

Whatever you call Karma will always be an act of ego unless you transcend the ego.
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